Some horses are afraid of everything and every horse seems to be afraid of at least something! Plastic bags on the ground, a rain jacket or poncho, leaves blowing in the wind, water bottles, tarps, umbrellas, bridges, a new jump in the arena, his own shadow….the list could go on forever!
This can be extremely frustrating for the rider or trainer, who often doesn’t get why the horse is so scared, or, often, can’t even figure out what the animal is scared of. Temple Grandin, in her latest book, Animals Make Us Human
When you’re working with animals, novelty can be attractive or scary depending on how it is presented. The single most important factor determining whether a new thing is more interesting than scary is whether the animal has control over whether to approach the object. Animals are terrified by forced novelty. They don’t want new things shoved into their faces, and people don’t either. But if you give animals and people a new thing and let them voluntarily decide how to explore it, they will.
Unfortunately, riders and trainers often get in too big of a hurry and want to speed the process along. They try and force the horse over the bridge, through the scary gate, or past the lady with the huge umbrella and ugly green hat. When we resort to force and punishment, the object becomes even more frightening to the animal.
Many horse trainers advocate a concept of approach and retreat, which can work wonderfully. Basically, you allow the animal to approach as far as it comfortably wants to approach, then allow the animal to retreat. You alternate approaching and retreating from an object, gradually getting closer, and rewarding the animal when progress is made. Target training fits in great with this–the horse already understands follow the target, so he can then approach the new object by following a target towards it.
Although not always practical, an alternative way could be to remove the trainer altogether and let the animal explore the novel object without any pressure from the handler. I’ve tried this with horses before, and it can work wonderfully. For example, many horses are afraid to step across a tarp.
However, if you put a tarp in a pasture with half a dozen horses, they’ll most likely be standing on the thing before too long, pawing and investigating. Horses are innately curious and if one brave horse is willing to approach the tarp first, the rest will often soon follow. Without a trainer present, the horse feels completely in control of the situation. If the tarp becomes too scary, he can immediately turn and run away–there is absolutely no pressure or force making him stay. Being able to approach and retreat on his own helps build the horse’s confidence.
It’s probably a good idea to balance these techniques. A horse who is allowed to explore novel objects at liberty will be more confident about his surrounding and less likely to spook when he encounters new distractions on the trail or at a show.
However, it is also good to work with the horse online or in the saddle. If the trainer goes gently and slowly, the horse will learn to trust the trainer’s suggestions, rather than balk or come up with his own plan. If the horse learns that he can depend on the rider to work with him through scary situations, he’ll be more likely to follow the rider’s guidance when they encounter new and novel situations in the future.
It’s so interesting that you should post this today. My dog had been barking a lot at random things lateley and I decided instead of getting him to be quiet using sitting and a treat reward after sitting quietly for a while, that I would just let him bark and see what happened.
He generally calmed himself down fairly quickly. But what I noticed was that he was way calmer after calming himself down that when I would intervene to calm him down. It was kind of amazing. We went on a whole walk where I basically let him lead the way and bark if he needed to and move wherever he wanted. He actually in the end barked less than he would have otherwise.
I also felt he had learned something from each experience and that he was more secure for it. He pulled on the leash less, seemed less stressed.
It was very interesting for me. Because I still don’t know what he was barking at most of the time, but he seemed to take care of it himself. It wasn’t easy to let him keep barking at first, but I think today at least, it worked out really well.
Interesting Matt.
Sometimes when we intervene with treats, I wonder if it makes it harder for the animal, especially when dealing with fear or aggression issues.
Also, you could have unknowingly been reinforcing the barking by creating a behavior chain of
barking –> leads to sitting –> leads to quiet –> leads to treat.
and the dog could have learned that by barking, he would eventually get a treat. You could have (unknowingly) also been reinforcing un-calm behavior.
It will be interesting for you to see how much, if any, the barking decreases over time.
Don’t you wonder what he was barking at, though? 🙂
With the horses, they’ll often spook or look at something, and I have no clue what they’ve just seen. Often it would be much easier to deal with the behavior if I knew what was causing the behavior!
cheers,
Mary
You can also try to work on his confidence on what he see so he would figure out things. My dog used to scared and bark so much with the blender, vacuum, etc. We tried to use those things when he feels so tired and sleepy so he will ignore them.
Thanks for commenting, Wishbone!
Gradually desensitizing an animal to scary sounds (blending, vacuum, etc) can take a lot of time and patience!
I think gradually decreasing the distance the animal is from the object and reinforcing good behavior when the animal approaches the object both work well.
I’d be a bit cautious about waiting until the animal is tired or sleepy to work on introducing new objects. Some tired dogs have a shorter attention span and could get frustrated or scared more easily than an alert animal.